Swiss Army Man is a comedy so head-scratching-ly surreal that even the Sundance Film Festival programmer introducing it on Friday afternoon confessed, “I’m not sure what this is about, but I thought it should be here.”

Essentially, the film stars Paul Dano as a suicidal man stranded on a desert island and ready to give up hope, when a flatulent corpse (played by Daniel Radcliffe) washes ashore. Dano is able to board Radcliffe’s cadaver and ride it like a jet ski back to land, where Radcliffe’s various body parts offer a surprising number of survival utilities during Dano’s trek back to civilization. (Hence the film’s title.) Somehow, Radcliffe’s character begins to show signs of life, and Dano’s character coaxes his revival by teaching him how to live, love, and pass gas inconspicuously . . . in theory. (The corpse does not stop releasing bodily emissions throughout the movie.) Variety savvily summed up the film as “Cast Away meets Weekend at Bernie’s, as directed by Michel Gondry.”

Regardless of whether or not audiences enjoy the film, or flatulence-related movie plots, they will walk away from the picture knowing that everyone involved was 100 percent committed to the unequivocally unique vision, whatever that is or means exactly. Because, as filmmakers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan—the visionaries behind DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” music video—revealed during the Q&A that followed the screening, they aren’t entirely sure of those points either.

“Originally it was just a fart joke that Dan made to me,” Scheinert said of the film’s inspiration. “And then, just joking along the way about how the man riding a farting corpse could be a feature, I think we stumbled on something personal. It was an opportunity to express mortality and big ideas but with fart jokes so we don’t feel too self-conscious about it being a full-on drama.”

Added Kwan, “It was like the dumbest idea mixed with the most personal ideas and we kind of splashed them together to see what happens.”

As for what appealed to the actors, Radcliffe said, “The script was really funny and original. And then Paul wrote to me and said, essentially, ‘I think these directors are crazy geniuses.’ Then I met Dan Scheinert, and the chance to play a dead guy in this context was just too much fun to pass up.”

Dano chimed in that he was game to star as soon as he flipped the first page of the script: “Like page two, once [the character] was riding the farting body, I was in.”

But . . . what is the movie about, again?

“There was one line we came up with,” said Kwan. “That was, ‘A suicidal man has to convince a dead body that life is worth living. And so it’s a film exploring the contradiction and comedy and drama in that.”

Although the film leaves audiences with more questions than answers, Scheinert did seem certain of one aspect of the project. When an audience member mistakenly identified the movie as a comedy, the filmmaker immediately cut in to clarify, “Actually, it’s a fart drama.”